Morihiro Hosokawa

Morihiro Hosokawa (14 January 1938-) was Prime Minister of Japan from 9 August 1993 to 28 April 1994, succeeding Kiichi Miyazawa and preceding Tsutomu Hata. He was a member of the Japan New Party during his premiership, having changed party affiliation several times; he was the first non-Jiminto prime minister since 1955.

Biography
Morihiro Hosokawa was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1938, the maternal grandson of Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe and a paternal descendant of Christian heroine Gracia Hosokawa. He graduated from Sophia University in 1961 and worked as a journalist for five years, winning election to the House of Councillors as a Liberal Democratic Party of Japan representative from Kumamoto Prefecture in 1971. From 1983 to 1991, he served as Governor of Kumamoto Prefecture, and he founded the reformist Japan New Party in 1992. In 1993, he became Prime Minister of Japan at the head of a coalition of anti-LDP parties (the JNP, the Japan Socialist Party, the Japan Renewal Party, Komeito, the Democratic Socialist Party of Japan, New Party Sakigake, and a few others), the first non-LDP prime minister since 1955. US ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale said that Hosokawa had a John F. Kennedy-esque ability to focus on ideals, but his coalition had no common ideas apart from opposition to the LDP, which undermined him during his term. Hosokawa apologized for Japan's atrocities in World War II, heading to South Korea to apologize for the annexation of Korea in 1910. Russian president Boris Yeltsin, inspired by Hosokawa's actions, apologized for the Soviet detention of Japanese prisoners of war in Siberia, and Hosokawa believed that, if both of them had remained in office longer, Russo-Japanese relations would have been better. Hosokawa was friendly with the United States, but he argued with President Bill Clinton over the USA's unfair trade deals. In April 1994, he was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had taken a massive bribe from a trucking company linked to organized crime, and Tsutomu Hata succeeded him.